Ben wrote:
A quick look at the "Requirements" section of the article says "For six
seats, you'll also need a motherboard with an AGP slot and five available
PCI slots" - i.e., not just multiple outputs for the same video hardware
but actual multiple video cards. That sounds like it lets laptops out
completely.

-----
The requirement is probably not separate cards, but separately addressable
display buffers -- My work laptop, a Lenovo T60 (running Win XP... work's
decision, not mine) supports dual displays -- different windows on the LCD
vs the back connector.

>
> Ben wrote:
> A quick look at the "Requirements" section of the article says "For six
> seats, you'll also need a motherboard with an AGP slot and five available
> PCI slots" - i.e., not just multiple outputs for the same video hardware
> but actual multiple video cards. That sounds like it lets laptops out
> completely.
>
> -----
> The requirement is probably not separate cards, but separately addressable
> display buffers -- My work laptop, a Lenovo T60 (running Win XP... work's
> decision, not mine) supports dual displays -- different windows on the LCD
> vs the back connector.

That's a reasonable distinction to make for theoretical purposes,
certainly - but in the case of using a laptop to "drive" six displays
and keyboards, one of the requirements is six video output connectors,
one per monitor. I don't know of any laptops that have such a thing - no
matter how many display buffers they have.

> Right -- driving 6 terminals would be beyond the laptop... but running 2
> users is certainly possible.

Now that you mention it, that might be very useful: a two-computer
network for not much more than the price of one might be quite appealing
to a number of people. E.g., you could essentially halve the amount of
money necessary to set up a small network, as long as pairs of these
"workstations" were close to each other. I wish I had the hardware and
the leisure to experiment with that... maybe one of our readers who has
the equipment and the enthusiasm will volunteer - and write an article
about the process. Shouldn't be very difficult...

> On Thu, Aug 09, 2007 at 11:24:11AM -0500, Peter Sanders wrote:
> > Right -- driving 6 terminals would be beyond the laptop... but running 2
> > users is certainly possible.
>=20
> Now that you mention it, that might be very useful: a two-computer
> network for not much more than the price of one might be quite appealing
> to a number of people. [...]

And now that you keep mentioning it, I've seen some drivers in the
kernel's USB section that drive a VGA display via USB (one is for LCD
display AFAIK). More than one keyboard and mouse might probably
connected by using USB, too. This calls for some experiments and
probably volunteers. ;)

> On Aug 09, 2007 at 1306 -0400, Ben Okopnik appeared and said:
> > On Thu, Aug 09, 2007 at 11:24:11AM -0500, Peter Sanders wrote:
> > > Right -- driving 6 terminals would be beyond the laptop... but running 2
> > > users is certainly possible.
> >
> > Now that you mention it, that might be very useful: a two-computer
> > network for not much more than the price of one might be quite appealing
> > to a number of people. [...]
>
> And now that you keep mentioning it, I've seen some drivers in the
> kernel's USB section that drive a VGA display via USB (one is for LCD
> display AFAIK). More than one keyboard and mouse might probably
> connected by using USB, too. This calls for some experiments and
> probably volunteers. ;)